blink and you'll miss it the milky way has been throwing bright bursts of radio waves
at us like a camera phone with an obnoxious flash if we could see fast radio bursts
with the naked eye they would look like tiny fireworks in outer space
since their discovery in 2007 we had no idea who was throwing such a spectacular galactic party
but that is about to change welcome to phenomenal and today let's figure out the
mystery of the supremely powerful but highly ephemeral burst of radio waves in deep space
to catch sight of a fast radio burst is to be extremely lucky in where and when you point your
radio dish these brief and mysterious beacons have been spotted in various and distant parts
of the universe as well as in our own galaxy their origins are unknown and their appearance
is unpredictable in 2007 scientists discovered a massive outburst of radio waves and energy in
space but could not discern what may have caused such an explosion since then many scientists have
been working restlessly on finding the source of such an exotic phenomenon in the deep space like
two noir detectives working on a murder mystery in the last 15 years the case has become more
convoluted as astronomers have spotted roughly a thousand more transient blasts of the same kind
most of them have been nothing but coal trails as they come and go so quickly researchers have
only been able to trace about 15 of them to their home galaxies all are massive and far from earth
they have been still trying to pin the likely galactic neighborhoods where these beams may
have originated tracking them is vitally important as the locations could offer clues to what or who
is causing such enigmatic cosmic fireworks until now astronomers had a wide array of suspects
behind these fast radio bursts the theories about frb's origins have seen both extremes of the
spectrum of reasoning some believe that they were caused by colliding black holes while others have
blamed extraterrestrial spaceships more reasonable theories suggest the bursts originate from neutron
stars which are corpses of stars that died and catastrophic explosions known as supernovas
as radio waves travel across space any interstellar gas or plasma along the
way can distort or disperse the wave's properties and trajectory the degree to
which a radio wave is dispersed can give clues to how much gas it passed through
and possibly how much distance it has traveled from its source this helps astronomers to map
the universe accurately and to understand the compositions of galaxies far beyond our reach
with large numbers of frbs astronomers can hopefully figure out how gas and matter are
distributed on a very large scale in the universe so alongside the mystery of what frbs are
themselves there's also the exciting potential for frbs as powerful cosmological probes in the future
despite so many suspects like in any good mystery novel astronomers found an unexpected twist of a
revelation on april 28 2020 to get us closer to the answers prior to this date all fast
radio bursts that humans were able to capture were extra galactic that is they happen in galaxies far
from our own but the frb on april 28th that was different this one originated within our galaxy
the milky way this was our first up and close confrontation with a fast radio burst
chime or the canadian hydrogen intensity mapping experiment detected 535 new fast radio bursts
during its first year of operation 2018 to 2019 however all of them occurred beyond our galaxy's
boundary interestingly at the time of the april 28 signal the telescope was not pointing straight
at the source but the signal was so strong the telescope captured it so to speak out of the
corner of its eye the signal was of sufficient strength to be detected from another galaxy that
indicates it is the same phenomenon as those earlier extra galactic bursts detected from
our galaxy and it had the typical duration of a fast radio burst in the fraction of a second that
this fast radio burst flashed it was 3 000 times brighter than any other magnetar radio signal
observed to date interestingly on april 27th the day before the swift burst alert telescope had
detected a series of gamma-ray bursts originating from the same point in the sky as the frb
these gamma rays had originated from sgr 1935 to 154 a so-called soft gamma repeater now if
you do not know what a soft gamma repeater is it is an astronomical object most likely a magnetar
or a neutron star with fossil disks around them that emits a large burst of gamma rays and x-rays
quite often sgr 1935-2154 in particular is known for periodically generating bursts
of gamma rays and x-rays the distance to this object has been estimated at 30 000 light years
for comparison the milky way galaxy is over 150 000 light years across this was also the first
time an frb was found originating from an object emitting gamma-ray and x-ray bursts this had
astronomers come to an astonishing conclusion the frbs may have originated from magnetars
imagine a cosmic object so magnetically strong that it will even stretch the atoms in a shape
resembling pencils sgr 1935 2154 is believed to be a magnetar a type of neutron star with a hyper
magnetic field strong enough to pull the keys from your pocket from as far away as the moon
a magnetar is an exotic type of neutron star its defining feature is that it has an ultra powerful
magnetic field the field is about 1 000 times stronger than a normal neutron star and about
a trillion times stronger than the earth's astrophysicists do not yet know exactly how
magnetar generates its stupendous magnetic field however it probably relates to the incredible
density of neutron stars and their peculiar interiors just one sugar cube size amount of
neutron star material would weigh a billion tons on the earth about the same as an average mountain
the neutron star's interior is a complicated dance of physics under extreme conditions resulting in
very odd structures the oddity starts near the surface with blobs of a few hundred neutrons that
are best described as neutron gnocchi below that the neutron blobs glued together into long chains
we have entered the spaghetti layer underneath that and even more extreme pressures the spaghetti
strands fuse side by side and form lasagna sheets under it all even neutron lasagna loses its shape
becoming a uniform mass but that mass has gaps in it in the form of long tubes finally
delicious penne am i the only one feeling a strong craving for some spicy italian food right now
this exotic recipe of neutrons quarks and exotic states of matter such as bose-einstein condensates
create a superconducting fluid so when a magnetar rotates like every other heavy cosmic object
it would behave like a huge dynamo generating an immense magnetic field
apart from these ultra powerful magnetic fields magnetars also release vast amounts of energy
in the form of flares x-rays and gamma-ray bursts they are therefore associated with
extreme events in the universe now including the phenomenon of fast radial bursts
making them perhaps the most bizarre objects in the cosmos next to black holes
after the revelation made on april 28 2020 astronomers have theorized that frbs might be
produced when the crust of the neutron star suffers a starquake as a result of tension
between a neutron star's intense gravity and its magnetic field this tension may be suddenly
and incomprehensibly violently released in the starquake this may mean that the neutron star's
crust thought to be a million times stronger than steel slips by just a millimeter however this tiny
shift may be sufficient to generate a brief burst of radio energy so powerful it can be detected
from other galaxies which we detect as an frb just maybe it seems possible and in astrophysics what's
possible is the name of the game but does that mean we can close the case of these mysterious
flashes across the universe and proclaim magnetars as the sole reason for their occurrence
chime or the canadian hydrogen intensity mapping experiment is a telescope with no moving parts
located near penticton and british columbia at any given time it observes one narrow strip of the sky
above it but as the earth rotates the telescope scans the sky and digital processing chips
collected signals to form an image the results gathered by this telescope seem to cement the idea
that there are at least two distinct types of fast radial bursts out of 535 frbs detected by chime
61 are repeaters which means that they have been seen emitting bursts multiple times
the rest of the detected frps were concluded to be a one-off event and rather on the short side
in duration repeaters also emit on a much narrower band of radio frequencies than the one-off bursts
fast radio bursts tend to be detected over one second or more but this duration is misleadingly
long as signals travel across millions of light years of space intergalactic matter tends to smear
radio waves across the spectrum a phenomenon known as dispersion as a result lower frequency waves
can arrive at earth with a delay of several seconds compared with higher frequency ones
researchers have calculated that at the source the emission of a radial burst typically lasts only a
few milliseconds during that time the source of a burst can emit 500 million times more energy
than the sun over a comparable amount of time this extent of the dispersion of wavelengths provides
a rough indication of how far the waves had to travel so far all the births have been shown
to originate in other galaxies except for one event that occurred in the milky way the repeater
discovered by spitler and her collaborators in 2016 has cycles of activity lasting a day or so
emitting several bursts per hour and repeating every 160 days this regular repetition offers
some clues to what might be causing the bursts one possible explanation spitler says is that
repeaters could occur when a highly magnetized neutron star circles around an ordinary star
in an elongated orbit as a neutron star periodically gets closer to its companion
burst could result from its magnetic field scattering the highly energetic stellar wind
non-repeaters on the other hand could be the result of cataclysmic events
such as the collisions of neutron stars or magnetic storms in young neutron stars called
magnetars the milky way event was linked to a known magnetar but the magnetar theory has been
cast into doubt by the finding reported last month of a burst from a globular cluster in the galaxy
m813 globular clusters are dense collections of very old stars and are considered unlikely to host
magnus stars this begs the question are we back to square one with this mystery
if magnetars are not the cause then can we look into other possibilities the good thing is that
recent discoveries have helped us to discard many sources which still bring us closer to the answer
as sherlock holmes said once you eliminate the impossible whatever remains no matter
how improbable must be the truth so it's rather elementary my dear viewer that we will soon unveil
the secrets of fast radio burst and open the endless possibilities of traversing through space
so what are your thoughts tell us in the comments and as always thanks for watching fact nominal